BY EMMANUEL AZIKEN, POLITICAL EDITOR
PERHAPS for the first time in the about four years he assumed office as Senate President, Senator David Mark these days has compelling reason to forgo his regular afternoon teeing at the Abuja Golf Club. Unlike his many predecessors whose stay in office was characterized by tension and many plots, Mark has sat out almost four years in office without much hiccup. While many of his predecessors used their afternoons to plot survival strategies, Mark to the surprise of many spent his own time in his lifelong passion – golfing.

Critics say that he could only have afforded the leisure of playing golf in the afternoons because as  ringleader of the many insurrections that removed his predecessors from office, that he knew the locations of the banana peels that caused them to slip off and as such carefully avoided them.

His carefulness has paid off leading to the most stable Senate of the fourth republic. His expertise has helped Senator Mark break the survival record achieved by Senator Anyim Pius Anyim between July 2000 and June 2003.

After achieving that record and also another record of being the first sitting Senate President to win re-election to the Senate, Senator Mark is looking forward to the unprecedented history of becoming the first Senate President to lead two different Senates.

At midweek, the challenges were as expected stiff. Like the last Senate leadership contest in June 2007, the most formidable opposition against Mark is coming from the class of outgoing Governors coming to the Senate.

The office of Senate President is presently zoned to the North-Central geopolitical zone from which has the outgoing Governor of Kwara State, Dr. Abubakar Saraki as a Senator-Elect. Senator-Elect Abdullahi Adamu, the immediate past Governor of Nasarawa State is also being regarded as a possible contender in the race for the Senate presidency.

The aspirations of the duo would, however, have to be circumscribed within whatever zoning configuration that the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, PDP allocates the office to. The PDP has the highest number of Senators in the Senate and the House of Representatives and if members follow party discipline the party would be in good position to even dictate the emergence of the new leadership.

The office was zoned to the North-Central in the twilight of the Olusegun Obasanjo administration ostensibly as a pay-off to Senator Mark who at that time had spent his eight years in the Senate as an abiding crooner in the Obasanjo Amen Corner in the Senate.

Mark was to shake off a last minute insurrection mounted by George Akume to assume office as Senate President in early June 2007. Since then he has led the most stable Senate of the fourth republic without any of the mutterings and rumpus that characterized the fourth and fifth Senates.

Mark according to information has already launched a bold bid for the office. His effort indeed went back to even before the National Assembly elections according to Vanguard sources.

The Senate President it was learnt made contacts and sometimes congratulated winners of the PDP senate primary tickets in most of the country. He is reported to have written letters of congratulation and in some cases to even to opposition party candidates he believed had good chances of defeating PDP candidates.

“He wrote me a letter of congratulation when I obtained the primary ticket,” one fresh Senator-Elect belonging to one of the opposition parties told Vanguard.

Besides the contenders from within the North-central geopolitical zone, the Senate President is equally faced with the serious challenge from other geopolitical zones scheming for a review of the present zoning arrangement. In this regard he is contending with the clamour from the Northeast and the Southeast geopolitical zones which are seeking for higher offices in the polity.

Presently, the highest elected political office holder from the Northeast is the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, while the Southeast has the Deputy Senate President as its highest office holder in an elective office.

Stakeholders from both groups have in recent meetings been advocating a review for the purpose of giving them higher stakes in the polity.

The Northeast geopolitical zone which presently has 14 Senators-Elect on the platform of the PDP it was learnt is already agitating for the office. Remarkably, only one PDP Senator from the region, that is, Senator Alkali Ahmed won re-election to the Senate.

Ahmed who is from Gombe State is ironically not interested in the contest, a fact that stems from the rumoured interest of the outgoing Governor of Gombe State, Alhaji Danjuma Goje who is to represent the Gombe Central Senatorial district in the next Senate.

The argument of the North-East geopolitical zone is that the core North should in the spirit of national reconciliation be pacified with the office of Senate President. They are equally arguing for religious balance in the top positions in the National Assembly,” an argument that presumes that all 14 Senators-Elect from the Northeast are Muslims.

However, that argument is being shot down by advocates of Mark. Under the present arrangement, the Senate President and his deputy are both Christians while the reverse is the case in the House of Representatives where the Speaker and his deputy are both Muslims. Canvassers for Mark are hoping to retain the balance.

While advocates for Mark are hinging on a retention of the present zoning policy of the PDP, there is equally some drumbeat that the presidency would be much more comfortable with Mark sustaining the ongoing collaboration between the two arms of government.

The advocates point at Mark’s supportive role for Jonathan during the national crisis triggered by the ill-health of former President Umaru Yar‘adua last year.

However, the contention from the Southeast is that after delivering more than 85% of their votes to the PDP during the last round of elections that the zone should not be put to lag behind the Southwest PDP which could barely survive the Tsunami of the Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN in the region.

Indeed, in canvassing lifting the zone in the next dispensation, the Southeast caucus of the House of Representatives at a meeting on Tuesday agreed that religion should not be factored in the election of the new leadership.

“In 2007, the President of the Senate, Senator David Mark and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Rt. Hon Patricia Etteh were Christians. In fact, in the current legislature, both the Speaker and the Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives are Muslims. Religion has never been an issue. How has it now crept in surreptitiously?”

“We insist on either the offices of the President of the Senate or Speaker of the House of Representatives. We will reject other offices such as Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Deputy President of the Senate or any such office that may be offered to undermine the attainment of the two offices so mentioned,” they asserted in a communiqué released on Wednesday.

The position of the Southeast House of Representatives caucus is bound to raise apprehension in the camp of Senator Mark considering the pivotal role of Senator Ike Ekweremadu, the deputy President of the Senate who is from the Southeast.

Would Ekweremadu jettison the collective demand of Ndigbo for his own desire to remain a deputy to Mark? It is a sensitive question which associates of Ekweremadu, however, wave aside on the platform of religious sensitivity.

“We already have a winning team and changing it would bring the difficulty of having a Senate, Deputy, and Speaker who are all Christians,” an associate of Ekweremadu involved in the joint campaign with Mark told Vanguard.